Saturday, June 17, 2017

Urm Le Fou (Urm the Mad) by Philippe Druillet 1975

I'll be branching out from American comics from time to time here at the Spinner Rack. My love for comics knows no bounds. Imagined borders and oceans be damned. Below is a story by Phillipe Druillet from 1975. Druillet was one of the influential French artists that helped start the magazine Metal Hurlant in 1975, along with Jean-Pierre Dionnet, Bernard Farkas and Moebius. A version of the magazine began publishing in 1977 under the title Heavy Metal here in America. The actual translated pages below are from the pages of Heavy Metal. Druillet is best known for his Lone Sloane books, and I believe those are the only books that have ever been translated into English (outside of serializing in Heavy Metal). Urm Le Fou isn't so much a lucid story as much as it's a hallucinogenic series of images with words that give the impression of something larger. I like that. I may be wrong and it may make complete sense to the person standing next to me, but the art is beautiful. His coloring really grabs you by the brain and squeezes hard. It's a visceral experience visually. By the way, I just re-read it while listening to Harmonia '76 with Brian Eno. Totally works. Rad.